


Straw into Gold

by orphan_account



Series: Nothing Like the Sun [2]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alternate Timelines, Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - 1990s, Canon-Typical Violence, Companion Piece, Disturbing Themes, F/M, Gaslighting, Manipulation, Possessive Behavior, Unhealthy Relationships
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-08-30
Updated: 2018-11-20
Packaged: 2019-07-04 15:48:29
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,158
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15844449
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: Tom has never spared a second thought for Hermione Granger.He knows, secondhand, that she's a Muggle-born, that her only friends are Harry Potter and the two youngest Weasleys, and that she's got a rather notorious reputation as an insufferable little know-it-all. He's never cared to learn more, and he certainly never expected her to become a spanner in the works.Perhaps he should have spared her another thought or two, after all.





	1. Chapter 1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi! Because [Nothing Like the Sun](https://archiveofourown.org/works/15707220/chapters/36506895) is told strictly in third-person limited, I wanted to find of way of giving my readers a glimpse into Tom's thoughts. Therefore: this. 
> 
> Just a blanket warning for this collection as a whole: Tom's brain is a cesspool, and his thoughts can be disturbing and violent. Expect gross things. And please, please do not read this if you haven't already caught up on Nothing Like the Sun's updates, as there will be spoilers. 
> 
> This particular chapter is set during Chapter 8 of NLtS, and is a perspective flip on Tom and Hermione's confrontation in the Chamber of Secrets.

 

> “Oh, I will be cruel to you, Marya Morevna. It will stop your breath, how cruel I can be. But you understand, don’t you? You are clever enough. I am a demanding creature. I am selfish and cruel and extremely unreasonable. But I am your servant. When you starve I will feed you; when you are sick I will tend you. I crawl at your feet; for before your love, your kisses, I am debased. For you alone I will be weak.”
> 
> ― Catherynne M. Valente, _Deathless_

**31 October 1996**

 

Tom Riddle had always known that he was not like other people.

By _not like other people_ , he didn’t mean that he could do magic, or that he was fundamentally better than all the rest—although both were true—but that the patterns of his thoughts and feelings were utterly unlike theirs. This was not an advantage: their softness, their vulnerabilities, their reactions confused him, and Tom hated to be confused. He did not understand them, could not empathize with them, and he doubted he ever would.

He’d found that he could compensate for this disconnect, however, if he approached life as one might approach an especially complex game of chess. People were easier to understand and manipulate if he didn’t try and see them as _people_ , as creatures like himself, and instead divided them up and approached them as either pawns or opponents. Pawns could always be sacrificed and discarded, and his opponents—well, he had a talent for anticipating their moves and planning accordingly.

Hermione Granger wasn’t the _first_ to have ever surprised him, but she was one among an elite few who’d managed to do it so often and so consistently.

“You can’t kill me,” she told him, defiant, as if by saying it with enough fierce conviction, she could make it so. She spoke the words as if they were spell work, as if the magic that had somehow cropped up in her despite her muddied ancestry could imbue them with the power to shape reality.

It couldn’t, of course: there was a great deal more to spell craft than will and conviction, for all that they _were_ key components. Tom supposed she deserved credit for trying, if nothing else.

When he allowed his skepticism to show on his face, curious as to what she’d do with it and how she’d react, she said, waspishly, “Yes, yes, I know that you very well _can_ , but what happens after? Everyone knows that you’re my— _God_ —that you’re my _boyfriend_.” She said _boyfriend_ the way other people said _cunt_ or _bastard_ , and, despite himself, Tom found that he had to swallow a laugh: he wouldn’t want to ruin her moment, after all, and she’d only just begun to gather steam.

She was still talking.

“—Statistically speaking, the majority of murder victims are killed by the people closest to them. You’ll be on the short list of suspects and you bloody well know it. Who’s _stupid_ now?”

Watched too many true crime documentaries, this one had. And it seemed that she was still smarting from the insults he’d paid to her intelligence, as well, as if her reputation as the brightest student in her year meant more to her than her life.

Curious little thing.

She finally shut her mouth, apparently waiting for—what? A counterargument? Was this all some sort of _debate_ to her? All right, then: far be it from him not to indulge a dying woman.

“But we’ve only been seeing each other for a very little while,” he said, wondering if this was what she wanted to hear. He could have skimmed across the surface of her thoughts to confirm it, but he found that guessing at what she would do next was rather—well, interesting. _Exciting_ , even. “I’d hardly call that close—and, as no one else can open the Chamber, the authorities will chalk you up to a missing person’s case, at least at first.”

Hermione’s eyes wavered with something like panic, or perhaps despair, but Tom didn’t want her to give up just yet, not if it meant losing these frissons that were zipping up and down his spine, so he said, rather generously, “Still, you make a fair point.”

Her eyes had dimmed only seconds ago, but now they brightened once more as if she’d never had cause to resign herself to her own mortality. Strange, how easily she could bounce from one emotion to another; all of it genuine, none of it artifice. One hardly need be a Legilimens to read her: all her thoughts and feelings sat naked on her face, there for anyone to see. To exploit.

“A-and,” she stammered, only to hesitate as though she’d spoken before she could complete her thought. Her pulse thrummed against his thumbs, and Tom’s fingers trembled as he fought not to snap the skinny bird bones in her wrists just because he could, just because his groin was still smarting from the blow she’d landed to it with her absurdly pointy knee.

She was lucky, really, that he was humoring her at all. The last person who’d struck him had got their pet rabbit strung from the rafters, and he’d grown creative and more powerful in the years since.

“If you kill me,” she went on, coaxing his thoughts away from whether her broken wrist bones would feel like splintered twigs beneath his palms, “I could come back as a ghost. Myrtle didn’t see her killer, but I will. Would.”

He’d already accounted for that, but he had to give her credit for evaluating the realities of a wizard’s death when her own was staring her so immediately, so hungrily, in the face.

“True enough,” Tom said in tones of warm approval. “I could always Obliviate you before I kill you, though. Come to that, I could Obliviate you and let you live. Wouldn’t that be better than dying?”

The dawning hope on Hermione’s face crumpled and died, and she wasn’t wrong to look that way. Having your brain cracked open and emptied couldn’t’ve been a pleasant experience, least of all for someone with a brain as unique as _hers_.

“But that might damage that bright mind of yours, and we wouldn’t want that, now, would we?” Tom’s sigh was deliberate, but that didn’t mean it wasn’t genuine. He didn’t want her putting his ambitions at risk, but neither did he want to see all that potential go to waste. “What to do, Hermione? You’ve left me with very few choices, and none of them good.”

The despairing look soured, and the hands he’d pinned to her sides bunched into fists. “You could always take a third option and piss off.”

Tom’s eyes thinned: rare was the individual who had the nerve to speak to him so. But _was_ it nerve, or was it bravado? Curiosity won out over his desire to be surprised, and he skimmed a light, questing touch over the shallowest end of her thoughts, getting a flash of red hair and freckles for his efforts.

The second-youngest Weasley, was it? Ronald or Roland or something like that, often rude and rarely clever and always shoveling great heaps of food into his gaping mouth. Hermione was thinking of what _he_ would say in this situation, and the thought was accompanied by a tangle of fear and regret and what Tom assumed was _affection_.

Of course.

That was the key to everything, wasn’t it? To control someone, to _truly_ control someone, one had only to threaten that which they held dear.

As remarkable as she often was, in this, Hermione was the same as everyone else.

Tom smiled without artifice. What an excellent turn this had taken.

“Your friends,” he said, withdrawing from his shallow dip into Hermione’s thoughts. “They mean a great deal to you, don’t they? You’d do almost anything for them, wouldn’t you?”

With what looked like a pained sort of effort, Hermione kept her mouth shut. Perhaps she thought she could stop this from happening if she refused to verbally acknowledge it. Irrational and childish, but Tom supposed she had very little left to cling to.

“I want to keep you alive, Hermione,” he said, and leaned farther into her as though physical proximity could convince her of his sincerity. “I’ll let you out of the Chamber. You and I shall carry on with our—relationship—”

Hermione scoffed, and Tom clenched his jaw. Really, here he was being _kind_ to her, and she _mocked_ him for it.

She’d learn. In due time, she’d learn.

“But,” he carried on, generously turning a blind eye to her disrespect when he would have broken anyone else’s wrist, “you’ve got to promise me—you must swear to it, and because I’m so very magnanimous, I won’t even ask that you make an Unbreakable Vow—but you must promise to keep your precious mouth _shut_ regarding Myrtle Warren, the Chamber, and my association with either.”

Having outlined his terms, Tom waited for her to agree to it or fight him—and if she was half as clever as he hoped she was, she’d overcome her Gryffindor nature and choose the path of self-preservation as any good Slytherin would—but she only said, “And Evan Rosier?”

Really, now: _must_ she insist upon beating that particular dead horse when her life was on the line?

“What of him?” Tom asked, impatient. “He committed suicide, Hermione.”

“Oh, I’m sure he did,” Hermione snapped, but just when Tom feared that she would refuse to drop it, she said, “And what if I don’t cooperate? What will you do?”

As if she didn’t know.

“You know very well what I’d do,” said Tom, watching for and catching her flinch of acknowledgement. “That’s the trouble with caring, Hermione; it gets you into all sorts of trouble.”

Because she loved them: she loved Potter and Weasley, or at least, she thought she did. Tom didn’t know what it was about them that was worth caring for, but the _why_ of it didn’t particularly matter. All that mattered to Tom was that he could weaponize Hermione’s loyalties for his own purposes.

With that in mind, he gave the surface of her thoughts another skim to confirm that he wasn’t wrong about the lengths to which she’d go for her friends, but caught something else while he was at it. Something irritating, but not unexpected.

“And don’t bet that you’ll be able to get to the authorities before I can kill you or your friends,” he said. “I’ll know what you intend to do before you can do it. If you believe nothing else that I say, believe that.”

She swallowed—he watched her throat stretch with the reflex and entertained thoughts of crushing her windpipe—but her hesitation was only a formality. They both knew who would win at this.

Tom dipped in closer, forehead grazing Hermione’s. His fixed his mouth in the saccharine smile that girls loved best but which had been entirely ineffective at charming the one sat in front of him.

“If you do as I ask, Hermione, then I won’t harm a hair on your friends’ heads. I swear to it.”

Her eyes darted to his face, then away. She licked her lips convulsively. She clearly didn’t believe him, and why should she? She knew him to be a liar.

But even if she didn’t believe him, she’d still agree to what he’d proposed. He saw the _yes_ sitting on her tongue, saw resignation dawning in her eyes. He leaned farther into her still, hungry for it, for her capitulation.

“All right,” she said, in the tones of someone agreeing not to fight their own death sentence.

Tom’s smile grew, unfurled. He half wanted to stroke an approving hand through her unruly hair.

 _Not an opponent any longer,_ he thought. _But a pawn._


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ...Hi. You didn't think I'd abandoned this project, did you? (I wouldn't blame you if you did.) 
> 
> I wrote this outtake for a friend, who requested Tom shopping in Muggle London for a Christmas present for Hermione + Draco wearing his Hogwarts uniform and being mistaken for a public school brat. It takes place between Chapters 15 and 16 of NLtS. Hope you like it, sweetums.

**24 December 1996**

Three hours in Muggle London and Draco had already managed to nearly get himself flattened by an oncoming vehicle not once but _twice_ , and Tom would have bet his grandfather’s ring that the ferrety little idiot was going to try for a third before the day was out.

In a better world, Tom would’ve been free to allow Draco to play in traffic, but Mr. and Mrs. Malfoy had been led to believe that their only son and his best mate were on a perfectly respectable shopping spree in Diagon Alley, and expected Tom to return Draco to their manor in one piece rather than several. And while Tom was a prodigiously capable young wizard over whom death held little dominion, even _he_ wouldn’t’ve been able to revive Draco had the great blond prat been reduced to a bloody smear on Oxford Street.

Draco, for his part, had so far swanned about the city as if he fancied himself none other than the Prince of bloody Wales, and it was with this entitled attitude that he stepped off the pavement without waiting for a break in traffic just as a double-decker bus rocketed at inadvisable speeds down the clogged street.

 _And there’s number three_.

Exhaling sharply, Tom grabbed Draco by his starched collar and hauled him onto the relative safety of the pavement and out of the way of the hulking bus before it could relieve him of his functioning heartbeat. If Draco had been hit by _that_ beast on wheels, there wouldn’t’ve been enough of him left to scoop into a body bag.

Did Tom think wistfully of what could have been had he moved only a touch slower? Possibly.

Draco, meanwhile, was mostly oblivious to his brush with motorized death in a way that was unique to the sheltered rich. Squirming out of Tom’s hold, he brushed imaginary grime from his sharply creased trousers and scowled after the double decker, which had only just missed bowling over a white-haired granny out on a bit of last-minute Christmas shopping.

“Merlin’s balls,” Draco swore, apparently uncaring that he might be overheard by Muggles who would inevitably wonder at what a teenage boy was doing swearing by a supposedly mythological Arthurian figure. “What, has that driver been doing a bit of day drinking? The Knight Bus would _never_ stand for such reckless behavior!”

Tom openly rolled his eyes but refrained from commenting. Had Draco _not_ been a spoilt rich prat who’d never once stepped aboard a form of public transportation barring the Hogwarts Express in the scope of his entire sodding life, he might’ve known that the Knight Bus, with its notable lack of harnesses and other basic safety precautions, made that double decker look perfectly respectable. But Draco _was_ a spoilt rich prat, and he _didn’t_ know that, and Tom wasn’t especially inclined to correct him, if only because he enjoyed it when Draco made a fool of himself.

Shoving his chapped hands into his coat pockets, Tom waited for a break in traffic before daring to cross the street, a discontent Draco close on his heels. Yesterday had seen a rare fall of London snow, but that snow had quickly turned to dirty slush, and that slush squelched beneath their boots as they made their way across the street. The mess didn’t particularly bother Tom—he was used to London’s filth—but Draco swore under his breath every few seconds, audibly disgusted.

Prissy little idiot.

They’d been combing London’s shops for the better part of the morning, Draco growing more and more discontent with every passing minute, but Tom had yet to find a gift that resonated with him.

“We’ve been to, what, five bookshops so far? Why not turn back and buy her a book? The little swot’s always got her nose buried in a book, hasn’t she? Surely even _she_ won’t complain.”  

Tom set his teeth, but said reasonably, “Too obvious; everyone she knows will have had the same idea. I want to get her something that she hasn’t got already.”

“Something she hasn’t got already, is it?” Tom wasn’t looking at Draco, but he could hear the sneer in his voice. “In that case, how about a hairbrush?”

Tom ignored him.

For all Draco’s vocal misery, Tom suspected that a part of him—a very small part—was enjoying the novelty of trooping through Muggle London, if only because it presented him with an opportunity to sneer at Muggles and their perplexing ways. He’d even gone so far as to pepper Tom with questions about his rejected purchases.

(“And what’s that one about, then?” Draco had asked three bookshops ago, jerking his pointed chin at the hardback copy of _Watership Down_ that Tom had been examining.

“Facsist rabbits,” Tom told him.  

Draco looked nonplussed at first, then scoffed. “How unaccountably _dull_.”)

Stepping out of the street and onto the crowded pavement, Tom nodded at the nearest storefront.

“I’d like to have a look in there,” he said.

Draco took one look at the sign and cackled loud enough to draw stares. Tom smiled angelically back at the onlookers until they all blushed and looked away.

“ _Virgin_ Megastore?” Draco brayed. “And what on _earth_ do they sell in _there_?”

Tom tamped down the urge to kick Draco in public.

“Compact discs and cassette tapes, among other things,” Tom said, and fairly patiently, at that. “It’s named after the owner’s record label.” Unable to resist tacking on a parting shot, he added, “Your derision’s fairly hypocritical, wouldn’t you say? Surely _you_ would feel right at home in a store named for _virgins_.”

Draco flushed a splotchy pink all the way from his thin cheeks to his pointed ears. 

“Right.” Draco dragged his mouth into a halfhearted sneer. “And I suppose Granger’s already relieved _you_ of that particular _problem_.”

As a matter of fact, she hadn’t, although they’d come close enough in the hospital wing. It was almost certainly further than Draco had ever got; most of the girls in their House were unlikely to let anyone pry their pureblooded legs apart without first receiving a proposal of marriage to soothe their well-bred morals.

(And now that Draco mentioned it, Tom couldn’t help but to picture—vividly—the flush that had painted Hermione’s skin from her cheekbones all the way down to her navel. She’d been hot all over, but her cunt had been _scorching_ , blood warm and sticky as syrup against Tom’s fingers. Just thinking about the way she’d felt back then made his hands twitch, but, no. Not here. He couldn’t do this here.)

Resurfacing from his spiraling thoughts, Tom reflected that Draco had sounded a little _too_ interested when he suggested that Hermione had already _relieved_ Tom of his virginity. As if he had a personal stake in this.

Tom would have had to’ve been a total moron not to notice Draco’s grudging crush on Hermione. Lucky for him that Hermione reciprocated his feelings with nothing but contempt, or else Tom would have been forced to go to extremes in the name of discouraging him.

That being said, he couldn’t entirely resist salting Draco’s wounds.

“I never kiss and tell, Draco,” Tom demurred, and nearly laughed aloud at the sour twist to Draco’s mouth. Let him wonder and lose sleep over wondering. Let him choke on his envy. “C’mon, we haven’t got all day, and it’s only a matter of time before your mother starts fussing. Wouldn’t want her to drive your poor father round the twist, now, would we?”

Turning neatly on his heel, Tom went, Draco fuming in his wake.  

The Virgin Megastore was much larger than the other shops they’d visited so far, and Tom hate to admit it, but he was at something of a loss. Draco immediately wandered off to poke at the displays of vinyl records, possibly because they were a somewhat familiar sight in an otherwise foreign landscape, but Tom…Tom didn’t quite know where to start, and that frustrated him immensely.

Music? She liked music, didn’t she? _Everyone_ liked music. All right, but what genre? She liked David Bowie, didn’t she? Or did she only care for him in that one film with the frothing goblin Muppets?  

“Help you?”

 _Fuck_.

Pasting on a winning smile and hiding his clenched hands behind his back, Tom turned to the girl who’d approached him.

From the way she was dressed, she must have worked here. She was about Tom’s age or perhaps a little older, maybe nineteen or twenty, with vivid purple streaks in her lank brown hair. She was also blushing.

“No, that’s quite all right,” Tom said, leaning into the affected accent he’d picked up from his pureblood friends. “I was only browsing. Thank you, though.”

“O-oh,” the girl stammered. Her nametag indicated that she was called Tabitha, and she fiddled with it while she talked. “All right, then.” Rather than leave immediately, she hovered, glancing from Tom to Draco and back again. “Is that blond bloke over there a friend of yours? D’you go to Harrow together? Eton, maybe?”

Ah. Right. Draco owned as many Muggle outfits as one might expect an elitist pureblood to own—which was exactly none. He’d turned up his nose at the notion of borrowing Tom’s clothes and had elected to wear his Hogwarts uniform, sans robe and crest. Dressed as he was, it stood to reason that the Muggles might mistake him for your average public school brat.

Smiling at Tabitha, Tom said, “Something like that, yes. If you’ll excuse me?”

He left before she could say anything else. Possibly he came off as quite rude, but it didn’t really matter. She was a Muggle; she was no one. Tom had nothing to gain from charming her.

Prowling down the store’s aisles, Tom scanned the items for sale and dismissed them all in turn. Shit, but he was awful at shopping for other people. Until Hermione, he’d had no _reason_ to shop for another person—

He came to a stop by a rack of t-shirts hanging from plastic clothing hangers. Perhaps—

Tom started flipping through the shirts, impatient fingers wrinkling the cotton. His mind wandered as his eyes skimmed the prints—he should have got her a book, after all—only to refocus as his attention was snared. 

Not quite believing his luck, Tom pulled a periwinkle-blue shirt off the rack, mouth tugging into a smile as he read the words that were stamped across the chest.

“Find something you like?”

Tabitha of the purple hair dye was back again. Possibly Tom hadn’t been quite rude _enough_. No matter. He was actually happy to see her.

Nothing to gain from charming her, was it? It appeared that he’d spoken too soon.

“As a matter of fact, I have,” Tom said, displaying the t-shirt for her perusal. “Sorry about earlier, by the way; I’m in a bit of a rush. Last-minute Christmas shopping; you know how it is.”

“Oh,” said Tabitha, looking pleased. “Yeah, I do.” Her smile grew as she looked the t-shirt over. “I love that film. David Bowie’s excellent, isn’t he?”

Sure. If you liked middle-aged gingers in spandex. “Perfectly excellent,” Tom lied smoothly. “My little sister’s mad about him.”

Tabitha’s eyes lit up, and she started toying with a lock of her hair. Tom fought not to let his revulsion show on his face.

“Your sister, is it? That’s sweet. I s’pose you’ll be wanting that one, then?”

“I think so, yes.” Tom made a show of looking the price tag over, of letting his face fall. “Oh, but…I’ve only got half this much in my wallet. I suppose I’ll have to put it back.”

It was a gamble. Tabitha thought that Tom attended a posh public school and he hadn’t said anything to correct her. Of course, he _could_ feasibly be a scholarship student—his clothes were neat, yes, but they were also visibly shabbier than Draco’s uniform. Still, if he had read this girl correctly—

“Oh!” Tabitha said, looking perfectly distraught on Tom’s behalf. “Well, I—I can cover the other half, if you want? I mean, I usually don’t do this sort of thing, but it’s the Christmas season, isn’t it? I wouldn’t want your little sister to be disappointed.”

“Oh, I couldn’t,” Tom said, eyebrows pulling together in practiced distress. “I couldn’t ask you to do something like that—we don’t even know each other—”

“Please,” Tabitha pressed. “I insist. For your sister, right?”

Tom pretended to think it over.

“Well, all right,” he said eventually. This time, his smile was too warm to be simply friendly. “But I owe you.”

Tabitha’s blush deepened, and she beamed.

A few minutes later, upon exiting the store with an incensed Draco—“I didn’t _mean_ to knock the bloody thing over!”—Tom dug through his plastic shopping bag and unearthed the receipt, upon which was scrawled a name and a phone number.

Draco peered over his shoulder. “What’s that?”

“Nothing important,” said Tom.

He crumpled the receipt up and tossed it into the street.


End file.
